One Day More!

Everybody was a baby once, Arthur. Oh, sure, maybe not today, or even yesterday. But once. Babies, chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of our us-ness, that we parents hurl into the future, like leathery footballs of hope. And you've got to get a good spiral on that baby, or evil will make an interception. -The Tick

Monday, October 29, 2012

Gallup, NM was somewhat unremarkable, except for the sunset, which took my breath away. It was so cold there in the morning, about 30 degrees, that Linc and I did not have an early run. Instead, we got up early together, did a quick walk, and then sat in the lobby of the hotel and had coffee and read. Well, I read. He sat there and just drank his coffee.  

We drove to the Painted Dessert and the Petrified Forest and were completely overwhelmed with the beauty there. I have never seen rocks like these. The landscape was enormous, with so many colors and textures to behold. It really was as if God decided that he needed this spot, specifically, to test out all His earth tones. 

  

Driving through the Petrified Forest and Painted Desert was the first time it really felt like we were on the west coast. It was so far from anything I was familiar with that the reality was no longer deniable. We weren’t back east anymore! 

Painted Desert Plank!

That night would be our last night on the road, and we stayed in Kingman, AZ. The excitement was building, and we were ready to be finished with the road trip. The girls were stoked, ready to be at the beach and start a new school. It was pretty awesome to listen to them talk about it all. They weren’t real anxious or scared of the huge change. They were taking it on. One more day, and we’d be arriving “home.”

How bizarre. Home was now… California.

It was a place where JJ and the girls had never even been, and I had only seen for a measly 10 days. Home was nothing but unknowns and questions. We weren’t just dipping our toes in the water to get a feel for things. We were grabbing the kids’ hands and jumping into the ocean, and our floatation devices were optimism and hope. It sounds dramatic, but it’s the total truth. 

As the girls ran through the Painted Desert, and I looked over the vast landscape, my heart was racing. No more safety net, no more favorite pubs, no more incredible weekends in my little townhouse. I thought about people sleeping on my couches in my basement, John Coltrane or Harry Connick Jr. on the ipod, and enormous brunches after long nights around the fire pit. All of those snapshots were a couple thousand miles away now, and were already feeling like distant memories. It made me think of what Oscar Wilde said: "Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us."

The beauty of the landscape gave me a good feeling about it all. I wasn’t staring at miles and miles of dust and flatlands. I was experiencing a new beauty, and it extended as far as my eyes could see.